Port KC is pushing for more river commerce as a lower-cost supply chain alternative to backed-up coastal train yards and snarled highways. They also see it as a possible moneymaker for the area.
Barges loaded with goods aren’t something you see floating along the Big Muddy through downtown KCMO very often, but barge transportation of goods up and down the Missouri isn’t unheard of or even a new thing. When The Dammed Missouri Valley by Richard Baumhoff, a book about the Missouri River Valley and its dams, was published in the mid-1950s, 3,000 tons of steel were shipped monthly on the river between Omaha, Nebraska and the Ruhr Valley of Germany by way of New Orleans.
Despite that guaranteed waterway, though, Kansas City isn’t a river-commerce leader. The U.S. Department of Transportation ranked it 149th out of 150 domestic ports for total tonnage hauled in a January report. But if Port KC gets its way, that tonnage is poised to grow.
The Missouri River Terminal project is a push by Port KC officials to take advantage of what they say is a lower-cost and more environmentally friendly shipping alternative for companies that might want to circumvent future rips in the supply chain, like the one that occurred during the Covid-19 pandemic.
The MRT project is planned on 415 acres of Port-owned land, where the Big Muddy passes the mouth of Blue River. There is already $30 million in dedicated state funding for the site. Richard Grenville, a maritime veteran brought on by the Port in 2012 to spearhead the MRT’s long-term development, said in an interview before his November retirement that the MRT is a multi-generational project.
During Grenville’s Port KC tenure, he worked on raising the profile of the Michael L. Parson Port Terminal, which handles the area’s current barge commerce on nine acres in KCMO’s West Bottoms neighborhood. Port officials claim that waterborne transport on a barge—a shipping equivalent of 16 railroad cars or 70 truck trailers—saves companies $10 to $12 per ton if they can wait five days to get a product to New Orleans.
The Thomas R. Carper Water Resources Development Act was introduced by Sam Graves, the 13-term U.S. Congressman from Missouri’s Sixth District, and was signed into law by Joe Biden right before he left office. Although the act was first introduced in 1968, it is renewed by Congress every few years. It allocates funds for individual Army Corps projects as well as the National Dam Safety Program, which funds upkeep of states’ dams.
In an email, Graves, who is the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman, wrote: “This WRDA bill continues to make small but meaningful changes to the policies that dictate how the Missouri River is managed to ensure flood control and navigation are the top priorities on the river. We’ve made a lot of progress on that front over the last several years and as long as we continue in the right direction, I think we’re going to see continued growth in commercial navigation in Kansas City and up and down the Missouri River.”
Ian Ritter, who wrote last month’s cover feature on the Missouri River, continues to cover all things Big Muddy for the magazine. Send Ritter a tip at river@kansascitymag.com.
